Revisiting History: The Unlikely Campaign to Vilify Winston Churchill

[Social Media]

 

A new wave of American populism is attempting to rewrite the history of Winston Churchill, painting the wartime Prime Minister as a villain rather than a hero. Traditionally, the critique of Churchill’s legacy has come from the Left, which often portrays him as a racist imperialist and the architect of controversial events such as the Bengal famine, the Tonypandy Riots, and the suppression of independence movements from India to Ireland. However, recent efforts to rebrand Churchill as a warmonger are emerging from a surprising source: Right-wing American populists.

 

 

This shift was brought into sharp focus when Darryl Cooper, a Right-wing American historian, sat down with Tucker Carlson for an interview in which he labeled Churchill the “chief villain of the Second World War.” Cooper’s claims included the argument that Churchill was responsible for spreading the war beyond Poland in 1939, refusing to negotiate with Hitler in 1940, and ordering the bombing of German cities. Carlson, a former Fox News presenter and Donald Trump supporter, amplified these controversial views to his vast audience, sparking outrage.

 

Churchill biographer Sir Max Hastings dismissed Cooper as a “know-nothing” who seeks attention rather than historical accuracy, advising the public to ignore him. However, the interview quickly gained traction online, with Elon Musk briefly endorsing it and a show that normally attracts 800,000 viewers reaching over 33 million views on social media platform X. As the debate raged on, prominent historians and biographers, including Sir Niall Ferguson and Andrew Roberts, stepped forward to defend Churchill’s legacy, describing Cooper’s portrayal as a “pack of lies.”

 

Ferguson and Roberts emphasized that Hitler, not Churchill, remains the widely accepted villain of the Second World War. Roberts argued that Churchill spent much of his career fighting against totalitarian threats, including Nazism, Communism, and Wilhelminism, ultimately preserving the freedoms that allowed such criticisms of him to flourish. Victor Davis Hanson, another military historian, noted that Britain entered the war to defend the territorial integrity of other nations, unlike any of the other major powers at the time. Any suggestion that Churchill should have negotiated peace with Hitler, Hanson argued, ignores the real threat of Nazi tyranny and the genocidal horrors that followed.

 

Despite widespread condemnation of Cooper’s views, his comments have reignited discussions about Churchill’s legacy and reflect a broader trend in contemporary American politics. Some Right-wing critics argue that Churchill’s wartime decisions weakened the West, a perspective that echoes earlier, more academic critiques from the 1990s by British historian John Charmley. Charmley argued that Churchill’s refusal to negotiate with Hitler doomed the British Empire, allowed socialism to take root in Britain, and paved the way for Soviet dominance in Europe.

 

Historian Dominic Sandbrook notes that while Charmley’s perspective never gained significant traction in Britain, the idea of criticizing Churchill from the Right has deeper roots in American populism, dating back to the isolationist sentiments of the 1920s and 1930s. Churchill’s aristocratic demeanor and close ties with European elites made him an easy target for American populists suspicious of foreign entanglements and conspiracies.

 

Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times warns that the resurgence of anti-Churchill sentiment reflects a broader attempt to undermine established narratives about the Second World War. Some commentators, like Marc Johnson, even suggest that these efforts are part of a disinformation campaign aimed at discrediting Western democracy and rewriting history in favor of authoritarian ideologies.

 

While some, like political consultant Frank Luntz, argue that Cooper’s views are unlikely to gain mainstream acceptance, the attention they have received highlights the influence of a loose network of internet provocateurs, contrarians, and self-styled historians. Sohrab Ahmari, a conservative columnist, refers to this phenomenon as the rise of the “Barbarian Right,” a group that glorifies strength, rejects egalitarian values, and often flirts with racist and anti-Semitic ideas.

 

In the end, the recent controversy surrounding Churchill’s legacy is less about historical revisionism and more about the cultural battles of today. By questioning widely accepted historical narratives, figures like Cooper and Carlson aim to provoke rather than inform, exploiting the complexities of history to fuel modern political agendas. As historian Megan Garber aptly puts it, the true targets of this campaign are not the historical figures themselves but the cultural and political opponents of the present.

 

Credit: Daily Telegraph 2024-09-11

 

 

 

Get the ASEAN NOW daily NEWSLETTER - Click HERE to subscribe

[Tug]

Right wing populist politicians are now mouthpieces for Putin in my humble opinion.This is just another way for putin to sow discord among the world’s democracy’s.

[Yagoda]

and for years winnie was vilified as a colonialist racist misogynistic capitalist warmongering exploiter by the left. Poor schnnok no one likes him

[Chomper Higgot]

Andrew Roberts, Baron Roberts of Belgravia, FSL, FRHistS, PhD, BA, Gonville and Caius Vollege Cambridge and Wolfson History Prize recipient 2000, a real historian, eviscerates the diatribe that was Darryl Cooper’s offering to Carlson.

 

At the center of Cooper’s stream of ill-informed nonsense and overt misrepresentation of historical facts is an allegation that Churchill was being controlled by Zionists (read Jews), it’s a rehash straight out of the ‘Elders of Zion’ and deserves, together with Cooper who vomits this antisemitic filth, far more critical attention than is being given.

 

https://historyreclaimed.co.uk/no-churchill-was-not-the-villain/

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Cameroni]

2 hours ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Andrew Roberts, Baron Roberts of Belgravia, FSL, FRHistS, PhD, BA, Gonville and Caius Vollege Cambridge and Wolfson History Prize recipient 2000, a real historian, eviscerates the diatribe that was Darryl Cooper’s offering to Carlson.

 

At the center of Cooper’s stream of ill-informed nonsense and overt misrepresentation of historical facts is an allegation that Churchill was being controlled by Zionists (read Jews), it’s a rehash straight out of the ‘Elders of Zion’ and deserves, together with Cooper who vomits this antisemitic filth, far more critical attention than is being given.

 

https://historyreclaimed.co.uk/no-churchill-was-not-the-villain/

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is rather amusing that you would trot out, of all people, Andrew Roberts, to defend Churchill.  Andrew Roberts of course

 

"...defended acts such as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, the Second Boer War concentration camps for Afrikaners during the Second Boer War, and mass internment in Northern Ireland (Operation Demetrius). Hari also wrote that Roberts made a speech at the expatriate South African Springbok Club, which flies the apartheid-era flag of South Africa and calls for "the re-establishment of civilised [i.e. white] rule throughout the African continent". Roberts claims that he did not realise the Springbok Club was racist when he took on the speaking engagement, despite the apartheid era flag, and the fact that the event was a commemoration of the 36th anniversary of UDI."

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Roberts,_Baron_Roberts_of_Belgravia

 

But Andrew Roberts is not just the worst kind of ultra nationalist, ie English nationalist but his historical  writing itself has been extremely suspect. 

 

Although Roberts's 2006 work A History of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900 won critical acclaim from some sections of the media,[44][45] The Economist drew attention to some historical, geographical, and typographical errors, as well as presenting a generally scathing review of the book. The newspaper referred to the work as "a giant political pamphlet larded with its author's prejudices". More generally, Reba Soffer described him in 2009 as "devoted ... to public, polemical conservatism as well as to historical revisionism".

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Roberts,_Baron_Roberts_of_Belgravia

 

Andrew Roberts also accused another historian of "blood libel" in one  of his books and lost this dispute, being completely humiliated due to his faulty historiography:

 

One claim made by Roberts in A History of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900 was that Harvard historian Caroline Elkins had committed "blood-libels" in her Pulitzer Prize-winning book Imperial Reckoning on British actions during the Kenya Emergency. Elkins was subsequently vindicated when files released by the UK's National Archives showed that abuses were described as "distressingly reminiscent of conditions in Nazi Germany or Communist Russia" by the Solicitor General of the time. The Foreign Secretary William Hague subsequently announced compensation for the first round of victims with statements that the British government "recognises that Kenyans were subjected to torture and other forms of ill-treatment" and "sincerely regrets that these abuses took place" during the Kenya Emergency.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Roberts,_Baron_Roberts_of_Belgravia

 

So Andrew Roberts speaks at white supremacist clubs that want to re-establish apartheid, had his history  books torn apart by reviewers, and libelled a Harvard historian before then being found completely wrong on his history.

 

Personally, I consider Andrew Roberts one of the worst historians of our lifetime, whose life's work has been to diminish the atrocities comitted by the British Empire, going so far as to speak at a white supremacist pro Apartheid club. He was himself accused of being a historical revisionist because of this. His scholarship, as the British Economist pointed out, is so biased and laden with inaccuracies that his books are political pamphlets at best.

 

But anyway, let's look at the actual argument. Whilst it's true that Churchill became prime minister in 1940, he was of course a member of government and a high ranking member of the Conservative Party long before that. In 1938 already Churchill called

 

"...for a mutual defence pact among European states threatened by German expansionism,".

 

"...Following the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Churchill and his supporters called for the foundation of a national coalition."

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill

 

For a long time the German hating Churchill had been agitating for a coaltion against Germany, long before his ascent to Prime Minister.

 

When Churchill did become Prime Minister he then DID do all he can to drag the US and then Russia into a war with Germany, when the British could no longer fight Germany on their own.

 

Churchill could have accepted peace terms with Germany, that were offered in 1940, but he did not.

 

The date of Churchill's appointment as prime minister clearly has no impact on Cooper's argument that  Churchill conspired to drag the US and Russia into a war that could have ended in 1940, had it not been for Churchill's decision to continue the war and reject the German peace offer.

 

[thaibeachlovers]

Churchill saved us all from Nazi rule over the British Empire, so I thank him. Otherwise he did many really bad things in his life, IMO, and some really bad things during the war eg the Crete campaign, though he may have done them for the right reasons.

 

It's noteworthy that after the war ended the people didn't want him as PM any more.

 

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-did-churchill-lose-the-1945-general-election.

[Cameroni]

1 minute ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Churchill saved us all from Nazi rule over the British Empire,

 

That's extremely debatable. Hitler had always been consistent in expressing his view that the British Empire was needed  to defend against the Communist menace. In his peace offer to Britain in 1940 Hitler's famous "appeal to reason" speech, he offered Britian that it can retain all its colonies. 

 

Going back as early as the book he wrote in prison, Hitler had expressed his admiaration of the British empire.

 

It is not clear at all if Hitler would have tried to conquer the British empire. Arguably his decision NOT to mop the smaller Middle Eastern states and get his oil from there was influenced by his desire not to attack the British Empire.

[Bkk Brian]

7 hours ago, Social Media said:

This shift was brought into sharp focus when Darryl Cooper, a Right-wing American historian, sat down with Tucker Carlson for an interview in which he labeled Churchill the “chief villain of the Second World War

Darryl Cooper, an American podcaster , influencer, and Holocaust denier   

 

"In July 2024, he contrasted a photo of Hitler in front of the Eiffel Tower with a photo from the controversial opening scene to the 2024 Olympic Games, and stated that the Hitler scene was preferable in every way"

 

"The historian Niall Ferguson points out that Cooper did not write a historical work and, unlike historians, does not collect and weigh evidence; Ferguson describes Cooper's approach to history as anti -history . [ 7 ] The Anti-Defamation League called Cooper a Nazi apologist and Jonathan Greenblatt , the director of the Anti-Defamation League, called him a Holocaust denier who had made anti-Semitic statements for years . [ 5 ]"

 

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darryl_Cooper

 

The Nazi apologists will stick up for him no doubt

[thaibeachlovers]

Just now, Cameroni said:

 

That's extremely debatable. Hitler had always been consistent in expressing his view that the British Empire was needed  to defend against the Communist menace. In his peace offer to Britain in 1940 Hitler's famous "appeal to reason" speech, he offered Britian that it can retain all its colonies. 

 

Going back as early as the book he wrote in prison, Hitler had expressed his admiaration of the British empire.

 

It is not clear at all if Hitler would have tried to conquer the British empire. Arguably his decision NOT to mop the smaller Middle Eastern states and get his oil from there was influenced by his desire not to attack the British Empire.

Stalin trusted Hitler and look at how that turned out.

Hitler deserved to have been captured alive and paraded around the world as an exhibit of pure evil, IMO.

[Cameroni]

9 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Stalin trusted Hitler and look at how that turned out.

Hitler deserved to have been captured alive and paraded around the world as an exhibit of pure evil, IMO.

 

Both Stalin and Hitler knew they would fight each other, it was just a question who would make the first move and when.

 

There was an underlying ideological antagonism between Russia and Germany, but not between Germany and Britain.

[thaibeachlovers]

3 minutes ago, Cameroni said:

Both Stalin and Hitler knew they would fight each other, it was just a question who would make the first move and when.

Your history books are obviously different to mine.

[proton]

SIR Winston Churchill KG OM CH TD DL FRS RA and Nobel prize winner. Voted the greatest ever Briton. Army veteran in 3 wars, victorious war leader, statesman and writer. The nay sayers can f off.

[Bkk Brian]

Hitting a new low

 

The Dangerous Rise of the Podcast Historians

This is, of course, rank historical falsification and outright Nazi apologia. By ignoring the fact that Nazi Germany targeted people with Jewish ancestry for extermination and mass-murdered them on this basis, Cooper engages in a form of Holocaust denial. And the concentration camps and killing centers weren’t the only sites of the Holocaust. Of the 6 million Jews murdered by Nazi Germany, up to 2 million were killed in what is often called the Holocaust by bullets, by marauding “deployment groups” (Einsatzgruppen) that were an integral part of the German invasion of Eastern Europe. With the help of the local accomplices, these death squads often rounded up the entire Jewish population and murdered most of them as their very first act upon entering a town.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/09/holocaust-denial-podcast-historians/679765/

https://archive.ph/NWmon

[Patong2021]

5 hours ago, Yagoda said:

and for years winnie was vilified as a colonialist racist misogynistic capitalist warmongering exploiter by the left. Poor schnnok no one likes him

 

I consider him a personal hero. A man's man. Never a coward, always bold and fearless. Driven by his sense of duty, he was a man of destiny.    He is judged now using the criteria of the 2020's. He was liberal and progressive by the standards of the 1900's.

 

 

14 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Churchill saved us all from Nazi rule over the British Empire, so I thank him. Otherwise he did many really bad things in his life, IMO, and some really bad things during the war eg the Crete campaign, though he may have done them for the right reasons.

 

It's noteworthy that after the war ended the people didn't want him as PM any more.

 

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-did-churchill-lose-the-1945-general-election.

 

The people came back to him and he served from 1951 to 1955 as PM.

[Patong2021]

11 minutes ago, Cameroni said:

 

Both Stalin and Hitler knew they would fight each other, it was just a question who would make the first move and when.

 

There was an underlying ideological antagonism between Russia and Germany, but not between Germany and Britain.

 

Rubbish. You are  regurgitating Goebbels propaganda and I am not surprised. There was an event called WWI. The dislike of the Huns grew after WWI and was guaranteed to remain for decades. The tremendous loss of life caused by the war and the walking crippled wounded that had come back served as a painful reminder. Great Britain with its respect for the rule of law and basic freedoms was an obstacle to Germany's expansion desire to impose its will on others.

[Cameroni]

3 hours ago, Chomper Higgot said:

 

 

At the center of Cooper’s stream of ill-informed nonsense and overt misrepresentation of historical facts is an allegation that Churchill was being controlled by Zionists (read Jews), it’s a rehash straight out of the ‘Elders of Zion’ and deserves, together with Cooper who vomits this antisemitic filth, far more critical attention than is being given.

 

https://historyreclaimed.co.uk/no-churchill-was-not-the-villain/

 

 

You probably forgot to read your article. Andrew Roberts concedes that Jewish financier Bernard Baruch saved Churchill from financial ruin:

 

"Winston Churchill faced a possible lifetime of debt and the end of his political career in 1929 but was saved by financier Bernard Baruch from a ruinous day playing the stock market, a historian said today."

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1987/01/27/churchills-rescue-from-ruin/efff4a31-1473-45d6-8e8f-226f1d977310/

 

Churchill also received financial gifts from jewish banker Sir Henry Strakosh

 

"Files declassified in the 2000s showed that Strakosch provided large financial gifts to Churchill in 1938 and 1940, which enabled Churchill to pay off his vast debts and to withdraw his Kent home Chartwell from sale at a time of severe financial pressures"

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Strakosch

 

Even Churchill's father already received financial patronage from the Rothschilds:

 

"Churchill was a friend of Nathan Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, and received "extensive loans" from the Rothschilds. He reported on the mining industry in South Africa on their behalf, where their agent"

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Randolph_Churchill#:~:text=Churchill was a friend of,the creation of De Beers.

 

 

[Chomper Higgot]

3 minutes ago, Cameroni said:

 

You probably forgot to read your article. Andrew Roberts concedes that Jewish financier Bernard Baruch saved Churchill from financial ruin:

 

"Winston Churchill faced a possible lifetime of debt and the end of his political career in 1929 but was saved by financier Bernard Baruch from a ruinous day playing the stock market, a historian said today."

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1987/01/27/churchills-rescue-from-ruin/efff4a31-1473-45d6-8e8f-226f1d977310/

 

Churchill also received financial gifts from jewish banker Sir Henry Strakosh

 

"Files declassified in the 2000s showed that Strakosch provided large financial gifts to Churchill in 1938 and 1940, which enabled Churchill to pay off his vast debts and to withdraw his Kent home Chartwell from sale at a time of severe financial pressures"

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Strakosch

 

Even Churchill's father already received financial patronage from the Rothschilds:

 

"Churchill was a friend of Nathan Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, and received "extensive loans" from the Rothschilds. He reported on the mining industry in South Africa on their behalf, where their agent"

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Randolph_Churchill#:~:text=Churchill was a friend of,the creation of De Beers.

 

 

Yep full on ‘Elders of Zion’ filth.

[Chomper Higgot]

41 minutes ago, proton said:

SIR Winston Churchill KG OM CH TD DL FRS RA and Nobel prize winner. Voted the greatest ever Briton. Army veteran in 3 wars, victorious war leader, statesman and writer. The nay sayers can f off.

Well said!

[thaibeachlovers]

4 minutes ago, Cameroni said:

 

You probably forgot to read your article. Andrew Roberts concedes that Jewish financier Bernard Baruch saved Churchill from financial ruin:

 

"Winston Churchill faced a possible lifetime of debt and the end of his political career in 1929 but was saved by financier Bernard Baruch from a ruinous day playing the stock market, a historian said today."

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1987/01/27/churchills-rescue-from-ruin/efff4a31-1473-45d6-8e8f-226f1d977310/

 

Churchill also received financial gifts from jewish banker Sir Henry Strakosh

 

"Files declassified in the 2000s showed that Strakosch provided large financial gifts to Churchill in 1938 and 1940, which enabled Churchill to pay off his vast debts and to withdraw his Kent home Chartwell from sale at a time of severe financial pressures"

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Strakosch

 

Even Churchill's father already received financial patronage from the Rothschilds:

 

"Churchill was a friend of Nathan Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, and received "extensive loans" from the Rothschilds. He reported on the mining industry in South Africa on their behalf, where their agent"

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Randolph_Churchill#:~:text=Churchill was a friend of,the creation of De Beers.

 

 

He was a zionist as the evidence shows.

 

https://www.aei.org/articles/was-churchill-a-zionist/

Churchill was the ardent friend of leading Jews in Britain and a supporter of Zionism, expressing as early as 1908 his sympathy for a “restoration” of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and successfully opposing an Aliens Bill brought to the House of Commons in 1904 that would have sharply restricted Jewish immigration into Britain. Later, as colonial secretary in the 1920s, Churchill took steps that enabled 300,000 Jews to emigrate to Palestine over the next decade, providing the nucleus for the future nation of Israel.

[Chomper Higgot]

47 minutes ago, Cameroni said:

 

Both Stalin and Hitler knew they would fight each other, it was just a question who would make the first move and when.

 

There was an underlying ideological antagonism between Russia and Germany, but not between Germany and Britain.

So when Hitler made a non aggression pact with Stalin in the prelude to invading Poland, then went ahead and invaded Russia, you still cling to the risible argument that Churchill should have made a non aggression pact with Hitler.

 

 

[Chomper Higgot]

2 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

He was a zionist as the evidence shows.

 

https://www.aei.org/articles/was-churchill-a-zionist/

Churchill was the ardent friend of leading Jews in Britain and a supporter of Zionism, expressing as early as 1908 his sympathy for a “restoration” of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and successfully opposing an Aliens Bill brought to the House of Commons in 1904 that would have sharply restricted Jewish immigration into Britain. Later, as colonial secretary in the 1920s, Churchill took steps that enabled 300,000 Jews to emigrate to Palestine over the next decade, providing the nucleus for the future nation of Israel.

To his great credit.

[Cameroni]

1 hour ago, Chomper Higgot said:

So when Hitler made a non aggression pact with Stalin in the prelude to invading Poland, then went ahead and invaded Russia, you still cling to the risible argument that Churchill should have made a non aggression pact with Hitler.

 

 

 

Yes, he should have.  Had Churchill accepted the peace offer Germany made in 1940 the world would have been spared 20 million deaths and horrific suffering, not to mention cultural and economic destruction. 

 

World War II, as it happened, happend the way it did in large part due to the decision of Winston Churchill not to accept Germany's peace offer of 1940.

 

Churchill of course wanted to save the British Empire. That was his whole purpose. However, by continuing the war Churchill lost the British Empire for Britain. Churchill was a loser of WWII just as he was in WWI.

 

His only hope to retain the British Empire was indeed to make peace in 1940. Hitler, whose book Mein Kampf Andrew Roberts mentions, had written in it admiringly of the British Empire. He had repeatedly declared that the British Empire was necessary as a bulwark against the Communist threat. 

 

Whilst everyone, even at the time, knew the Nazi Soviet pact was disingenous and just buying time for both sides, and it was a matter of time before the conflict erupted due to massive ideological antagonism (Nazism really came into being to combat the socialist threat). However, between Germany and Britain there was no ideological conflict and Hitler had said he would guarantee the existence of the Empire. 

[thaibeachlovers]

46 minutes ago, Cameroni said:

Had Churchill accepted the peace offer Germany made in 1940 the world would have been spared 20 million deaths and horrific suffering, not to mention cultural and economic destruction. 

Had Britain opted for neutrality, Hitler would have conquered the Soviet Union, and more than the estimated 20 to 40 million deaths of Barbarossa would have occurred. The Soviets only survived due to massive support of allied weapons, which was only possible because of Britain. Perhaps Soviet deaths don't count for you.

[Cameroni]

18 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Had Britain opted for neutrality, Hitler would have conquered the Soviet Union, and more than the estimated 20 to 40 million deaths of Barbarossa would have occurred. The Soviets only survived due to massive support of allied weapons, which was only possible because of Britain. Perhaps Soviet deaths don't count for you.

 

You know, to be fair, I don't  think Germany would have won against the USSR. If you look at the number of tanks, airplanes, artillery etc the Russians had, they far, far outnumbered Germany. I do not think there was ever a chance to beat the USSR. It was a massive mistake to attack Russia, based on Fremde Heere Ost's faulty assessment of Russia's strength. 

 

Hitler's only hope would have been to conquere the small, disjointed and exposed Arab oilfields, but then he would have been in conflict with the British empire.

 

But I take your point, the war with Russia was inevitable.

Edited September 11 by Cameroni

[thaibeachlovers]

8 minutes ago, Cameroni said:

 

You know, to be fair, I don't  Germany would have won against the USSR. If you look at the number of tanks, airplanes, artillery etc the Russians had, they far, far outnumbered Germany. I do not think there as ever a chance to beat the USSR. It was a massive mistake to attack Russia, based on Fremde Heere Ost's faulty assessment of Russia's strength. 

 

Hitler's only hope would have been to conquere the small, disjointed and exposed Arab oilfields, but then he would have been in conflict with the British empire.

 

But I take your point, the war with Russia was inevitable.

Read the book Barbarossa, and be educated. Stalin was taken by surprise, and had done little to prepare. It was a rout by the Germans. It was only that Stalin was a monster and willing to sacrifice millions that they survived at all, till the allied weapons arrived. 

German tanks and tactics were far superior at the start. It was only Hitler interfering that turned victory to defeat. Even his refusal to allow the army to retreat probably led to the loss of Europe. The German machine foundered in Russia, not Europe.

 

https://www.thenile.co.nz/books/stewart-binns/barbarossa/9781472279637?gad_source=1

Edited September 11 by thaibeachlovers

[Cameroni]

4 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Read the book Barbarossa, and be educated. Stalin was taken by surprise, and had done little to prepare. It was a rout by the Germans. It was only that Stalin was a monster and willing to sacrifice millions that they survived at all, till the allied weapons arrived. 

German tanks and tactics were far superior at the start. It was only Hitler interfering that turned victory to defeat. Even his refusal to allow the army to retreat probably led to the loss of Europe. The German machine foundered in Russia, not Europe.

 

https://www.thenile.co.nz/books/stewart-binns/barbarossa/9781472279637?gad_source=1

 

No, that's nonsense. Germany's initial success can't mask the fact that looking at the total number of tanks, plans, artillery etc Russia far outnumbered Germany. They never had a chance to defeat Russia.

 

Yes, German tactics were superior at the start, but the Russians quickly copied the German tactics.

 

One only has to look at the "strength" section here to see how outnumbered Nazi Germany was in terms of tanks and planes

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa

[Chomper Higgot]

48 minutes ago, Cameroni said:

 

You know, to be fair, I don't  think Germany would have won against the USSR. If you look at the number of tanks, airplanes, artillery etc the Russians had, they far, far outnumbered Germany. I do not think there was ever a chance to beat the USSR. It was a massive mistake to attack Russia, based on Fremde Heere Ost's faulty assessment of Russia's strength. 

 

Hitler's only hope would have been to conquere the small, disjointed and exposed Arab oilfields, but then he would have been in conflict with the British empire.

 

But I take your point, the war with Russia was inevitable.

The war with Britain was inevitable too, which is my actual point.

[Chomper Higgot]

1 hour ago, Cameroni said:

 

Yes, he should have.  Had Churchill accepted the peace offer Germany made in 1940 the world would have been spared 20 million deaths and horrific suffering, not to mention cultural and economic destruction. 

 

World War II, as it happened, happend the way it did in large part due to the decision of Winston Churchill not to accept Germany's peace offer of 1940.

 

Churchill of course wanted to save the British Empire. That was his whole purpose. However, by continuing the war Churchill lost the British Empire for Britain. Churchill was a loser of WWII just as he was in WWI.

 

His only hope to retain the British Empire was indeed to make peace in 1940. Hitler, whose book Mein Kampf Andrew Roberts mentions, had written in it admiringly of the British Empire. He had repeatedly declared that the British Empire was necessary as a bulwark against the Communist threat. 

 

Whilst everyone, even at the time, knew the Nazi Soviet pact was disingenous and just buying time for both sides, and it was a matter of time before the conflict erupted due to massive ideological antagonism (Nazism really came into being to combat the socialist threat). However, between Germany and Britain there was no ideological conflict and Hitler had said he would guarantee the existence of the Empire. 

Churchill, thank God, knew Hilter’s ‘Peace out time’ con on Chamberlin was disingenuous.

 

 

[Cameroni]

26 minutes ago, Chomper Higgot said:

The war with Britain was inevitable too, which is my actual point.

 

Why? On what basis? There was no compelling underlying ideological struggle between Germany and Britain. On the contrary,both sought to combat socialism at the time.

 

Hitler had repeatedly expressed the Empire was needed as a bulwark against Communism. He had written approvingly of the Empire in Mein Kampf.

[Cameroni]

27 minutes ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Churchill, thank God, knew Hilter’s ‘Peace out time’ con on Chamberlin was disingenuous.

 

 

That wasn't why Churchill opposed making peace with Germany. Churchill was anti-German already in 1933. He was concerned that Germany was becoming too strong, and if it had conquered Europe Britain would have been in danger.

 

But that was nonsense, Britain had nothing to offer Germany, an invasion of Britain would have been costly, for no benefit. Hitler wanted living space in the East, not on some islands.